What makes someone go from domestic macro swill to a craft beverage in todays beer market? I have asked this questions many times and for many of us it was THE HOP. It never fails, I am sitting at a bar and the baseball hat wearing jock to the right of me keeps blabbin on how he only likes "hoppy beer". Americans are falling in love with the hop however I feel that the India Pale Ale is a fad better left in India and in the British history books.
So, can you quantify a flavor? With brewing chemistry you can! So next time that jock tells you he likes only "hoppy beer" then respond in kind;
There is a unit of measurement that is often published on your bottle of beer called the international bitterness unit or IBU. You may think that this number is extracted by a panel of judges and different levels of bitterness are eroneously decided. This is incorrect thanks to our friend the chemist.
Hops are added in during the boil of your unfermented beer and the longer you let them boil the more you utilized their hidden characteristics called alpha acid. If you want to know how bitter your beer is going to be then simply use this formula: IBU =
weight of hops in grams X % alpha of hops
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The Volume of beer in liters X 10
